Narveson was sick

Brewers starter Chris Narveson struggled with a head cold and his command on Monday, throwing 65 pitches to record only seven outs. He was charged with seven earned runs on eight hits, including Jay Bruce’s third-inning home run amid a flurry of Reds hits.

“He didn’t have it,” manager Ron Roenicke said of his left-hander. “Everything was elevated. I don’t want to make excuses, but he was sick [Sunday]. He was definitely better today, but still probably wasn’t 100 percent. Well, I know he wasn’t 100 percent. Hopefully, that was the reason he was up in the zone.”

Asked how he prepared in the hours before his outing, Narveson quipped, “I drank a lot of fluid and took some drugs. It didn’t work too well.”

The Reds didn’t miss many of his elevated pitches, as each of the first five Cincinnati batters in the third collected hits, none of which were seeing-eye singles. Drew Stubbs ripped a single to right field before Bruce’s homer to right field made it 3-0. Joey Votto doubled and scored on Brandon Phillips’ sharp single to left field. Phillips took second on the throw and scored one batter later on Jonny Gomes’ single.

Hanigan eventually scored on a single by Reds starting pitcher Bronson Arroyo, but Narveson (1-1) was out of the game by then, in favor of reliever Brandon Kintzler. It was the shortest of Narveson’s 38 career starts. <

“We really don’t like facing him but he made a lot of mistakes today,” Reds second baseman Brandon Phillips said. “We just took advantage of those and went up there swinging the bats and hitting them where they wasn’t.”

Narveson worked 14 scoreless innings to start the season, but since then he’s surrendered 13 earned runs in 13 innings.

“We haven’t had too many innings like [the third] this year,” said Brewers third baseman Casey McGehee, who was 2-for-5 but sprained his left thumb on a game-ending groundout when he collided with Reds first baseman Joey Votto.

“’Narvey’ has pitched so well leading up to this point that by no means is it, like, any huge red flag,” McGehee said. “It was just one inning that things didn’t go our way.”

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2 Comments

While Jonathan Lucroy has been hitting very well, I feel that he has really been struggling with the pitching staff. In his last 7 games, he’s gone 2-5 with over a 6 ERA with the pitchers. The tandem of Gallardo and Lucroy now has Gallardo with a 5.3 ERA together in last year and this yeay. Last season, Lucroy as a catcher had a 16-19 divisional record. Also, our pitching staff went from 2nd place to 8th place just since he’s been up and the team went from tied to 1st to dropping to 4th in the division. I just don’t feel that he has what it takes at this point to be the every day starter and catch 5 of 6 games while still keeping our team winning and successful.

George Kottaras has a 2. something ERA with Gallardo in 7 games, including 2 complete game shutouts, and over the same time period as Lucroy has been up he had a 14-9 divisional record last year. His complete game shutout with Gallardo this year, his win against the cubs with the 8 pitch save from Axford and his 9-0 win with Wolf against Halladay and the Phillies were such big important games and the type of thing that I think we can get from Kottaras more often. His starters go a lot deeper and have better pitch counts than Lucroy, and he calls a better game in my opinion.

I miss George being on the team and I really hope they bring him back up soon.

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